GR Capital, the pan-European venture capital firm with offices in Berlin and Kyiv, has launched its second early growth fund — GR Capital Fund II, having signed the first closing of €30 million and targeting €100 million in total. AIN.Capital tells the details.
Founded in 2016, GR Capital is a venture capital investment company with offices in Berlin and Kyiv. It usually invests between €5-€10 million per company within fintech, mobility, proptech, healthtech, and future of work sectors.
GR focuses on B/C rounds. These are usually companies, whose annual revenue already exceeds €5-€10 million.
“For us, the rapid rate of business growth in the future is important, which in a pessimistic scenario cannot be less than 80-100% per year,” said Max Filippov, Managing Partner at GR Capital.
The strategy of the first and second funds is co-investment. Namely, it is about obtaining allocations in the best deals, the demand from investors for which is, as a rule, greater than the needs of companies, and therefore international top funds are issuing leads.
Four investments have already been made out of the second fund:
- Attest, UK (B2B SaaS platform for conducting market research through automated surveys of the target audience), GR Capital participated in Series B led by NEA;
- Billie, Germany (the leader of the buy now pay segment later for small and medium-sized enterprises with their own scoring system), joined in Series C led by Dawn Capital;
- Alma, Germany (B2B2C provider of buy now pay later services, France), GR invested in Series C led by Tencent;
Workmotion (remote workforce management SaaS platform), GR participated in Series B led by Canaan Partners - GR Capital Fund I has previously backed delivery services Glovo and Deliveroo, digital insurance company wefox, digital freight-forwarding company sennder, the largest digital real estate agency in Germany, McMakler, SaaS construction management platform Planradar, among a number of others. Total AUM currently exceeds €200 million.
“In the second fund, about 60% of the capital came from Ukrainian investors, 40% from investors from Eastern Europe and Israel. Our product is interesting for those who have already accumulated enough capital to study venture capital as a type of capital investment and add it to their investment portfolio. Their attitude to risk often prevents them from taking long-term investments in sectors that have emerged over the past few years seriously. As a rule, these are investors with checks of €0.5-5.0 million,”
The closing had to be postponed and downsized due to the Russian aggression, as most of the LPs have a substantial exposure to Ukraine. Still, the team is planning final closing in Q2 2023 with the participation from European investors.
GR Capital’s strategy is to invest into the best performing Western European tech companies at early growth stages (Series B/C) alongside with top-tier lead investors. Therefore, the fund provides an opportunity to its investors to participate in such high-profile deals. As for the portfolio companies, GR enables them to the benefits of the Eastern European markets, like qualified IT personnel, etc.
“In six years, starting as a little-known investment company from Ukraine, we managed to become the top ten most active European late stage funds, according to Sifted, investing into 18 leading businesses in the European tech space. We will continue to invest into proven innovative companies in Western Europe and bring them to the Eastern European markets, where we see great opportunities for their expansion.
It’s great to see that our commitment allows us to connect the best entrepreneurs from Ukraine as investors with the best performing European tech companies. At the same time Eastern Europe is getting much more attention as a potential strategic destination for tech business development,” Max Filippov said.
